Merlin Holland

Biography

Holland is the son of the author Vyvyan Holland and his second wife, Thelma Besant, and is the only grandchild of Oscar Wilde. Although a direct male-line descendant of Oscar Wilde, his last name differs because Wilde's wife Constance changed the children's surname to Holland (an old family name on her side) after Wilde's trial for gross indecency and subsequent imprisonment.

Work

For the last 30 years Holland has studied and researched Wilde's life. He is the co-editor, with Rupert Hart-Davis, of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, and the editor of Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the first uncensored version of his grandfather's 1895 trials, (also titled The Real Trial of Oscar Wilde for release in the US). Holland has criticized Richard Ellmann's 1987 biography, Oscar Wilde, as inaccurate, particularly the claim of syphilis. According to The Guardian, Holland has also "unearthed medical evidence within private family letters, which has enabled a doctor to determine the likely cause of Constance’s demise. The letters reveal symptoms nowadays associated with multiple sclerosis but apparently wrongly diagnosed by her two doctors. One [an unnamed German 'nerve doctor'] resorted to dubious remedies and the other [Luigi Maria Bossi] conducted a botched operation that days later claimed her life."

Holland has also written The Wilde Album, a small volume that included hitherto unpublished photographs of Wilde. The book focuses on how the scandal caused by Wilde's trials affected his family, most notably his wife, Constance, and their children, Cyril and Vyvyan. In 2006, his book Oscar Wilde: A Life in Letters was published, and his volume Coffee with Oscar Wilde, an imagined conversation with Oscar, was released in the autumn of 2007. Holland also wrote A Portrait of Oscar Wilde (2008), which reveals Wilde through manuscripts and letters from the Lucia Moreira Salles collection, located at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York City.

In addition, Holland has also worked as a wine writer and occasionally written features for Country Life, and The Oldie. Holland briefly toyed with the idea of changing his name back to Wilde: He told The New York Times in 1998, “But if I did it, it would have to be not just for Oscar, but for his father and mother, too, for the whole family. It was an extraordinary family before he came along, so if I put the family name back on the map for the right reasons, then it's all right.”

In July 2013, Holland gave the keynote address for a symposium on Oscar Wilde presented by The Santa Fe Opera. The address surveyed the popular and critical attitudes towards Wilde and his work from the end of his life to the present day. The symposium was given in conjunction with the opera company's world premiere presentations of Oscar, which was composed by Theodore Morrison from a libretto written by John Cox and the composer.

Holland's play The Trials of Oscar Wilde, co-authored with John O'Connor and re-enacting the 1895 trials of Lord Queensberry for libel and Oscar Wilde for gross indecency, toured the United Kingdom in 2014 in a production by the European Arts Company.

Personal life

Holland lives in Burgundy, France with his partner. His son, Lucian Holland (born 1979 from his mother Sarah), Oscar Wilde's only great-grandchild, studied classics at Magdalen College (where he occupied rooms Wilde had occupied) and is a computer programmer, living in London.

Published works